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In Search of Identities: 'Foreigners' in Fin-De- Siècle Belgian Café-Concerts

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In Search of Identities: 'Foreigners' in Fin-De- Siècle Belgian Café-Concerts . Volume 16, Issue 2 November 2019 In search of identities: ‘Foreigners’ in fin-de- siècle Belgian café-concerts Evelien Jonckheere, University of Antwerp, Belgium Abstract: This article reveals the substantial presence of all kinds of foreigners among the audiences in Belgian café-concerts and their position in ambitious urban and national politics in fin-de- siècle Belgian cities. Although ignored by academics for decades, Belgian fin-de-siècle café- concerts and their hedonistic atmosphere were highly influential, and even imitated, abroad. By combining quantitative and qualitative data from a wide range of research fields, it is possible to comprehend the café-concert and its audiences as transgressive identities, challenging concepts of social space, as well as nationalities, class and gender. By recognizing foreigners’ unique position in modern Belgian cities and also the café-concert as their favoured place for social encounters, new light is shed on the international community, urban economy, nationhood and modern identities. Keywords: Café-concert, International Audiences, Foreigners, Migration, Transgressive Identities, City Marketing, Urban Redevelopment, Global Trade, Belgium, Nationhood Introduction When visiting the Antwerp café-concert ‘Palais Indien’ in 1886, the famous French theatre critic Jules Lemaître was impressed by its lavish interior and multicultural entertainment: I saw in Antwerp something nearly perfect: Le Palais Indien. It was ornamented in a Babylonian and Sardanapalesque fashion. Compared to this, our Eden-Théâtre is the illustration of antique austerity. Le Palais offered sailors, returned after six months at sea, a summary of civilization’s supreme splendor. And to please them, there were songs in every language (1898, 311). Page 384 Volume 16, Issue 2 November 2019 Located in Belgium’s main port city, the Palais Indien witnessed a cosmopolitan audience and opulent decoration that surpassed even the most sumptuous Parisian halls of the time. Several other Belgian café-concerts exuded similar opulence and cosmopolitanism. Named after famous Parisian and London entertainment halls, these Eldorados, Alcazars, Alhambras, Olympias et cetera emerged in major Belgian cities such as Brussels, Antwerp, Liège and Ghent from 1876 onwards.1 According to theatre historian Lionel Renieu in his reference work Histoire des Théâtres de Bruxelles (1928), these café-concerts stem from the café-chantants of the 1830s, venues where alcohol and songs prevailed. Spectacular fairground attractions or numéros, in combination with musical entertainment and an occasional small piece or piécette at the end of the show while the audience was eating and drinking at tables in front of the stage, gradually led to the emergence of a variety bill (1928, 63). Late nineteenth century café-concerts with rows of chairs instead of tables in front of the stage, were labelled ‘music-halls’ by Renieu. However, this anglophone term was used only sporadically in Belgium where they were generally called café-concerts.2 Although this genealogy of Belgian café-concerts by Renieu is rather simplistic, lacks nuance and resembles Peter Bailey’s ‘pothouse to palace’ representation (1986, xiv), it offers an impression of a neglected genre of entertainment in Belgian urban history. Café- concerts were closely intertwined with everyday life in major fin-de-siècle cities. Moreover, Belgian café-concerts such as the Brussels ‘Eden-Théâtre’ were leaders in their genre, even being imitated in Paris,3 London, Liverpool, Manchester4 and Amsterdam5. The Brussels Eden-Théâtre was singled out by the contemporary foreign press as being one of the most beautiful halls in the world due to its sophisticated orientalist exterior, the work of the Parisian architect Wilhelm Kuhnen, along with its luxurious orientalist interior of red and golden colors by Alban Chambon and many refined sculptures by Tasson. Its octagonal auditorium had decorated walkways, a luxurious foyer, illuminated winter gardens with refreshing fountains, tropical plants, artificial grottos along the edge, and simulated oriental fairy tales contributing to a hedonistic atmosphere (1928, 230). Image 1 Image 2 Page 385 Volume 16, Issue 2 November 2019 Ten years after its inauguration, however, Brussels city council decided to level this architectural masterpiece. This decision was not objected to in the Belgian press. ‘It never served the community’6 was one of the reasons given by the city council to settle its disastrous fate. The fact that the foreign press provided greater coverage of the activities in the Brussels Eden-Théâtre is an initial indication of a close connection between the Eden- Théâtre and so-called ‘foreigners’ (étrangers in French; vreemdelingen in Dutch). This connection is also illustrated by a quotation of Renieu (1928, 93) about the Brussels ‘music- halls’: ‘Travelling foreigners (étrangers de passage), a notable part of the audience, prefer visiting them as they do not always understand the local language.’ As a consequence, this research aims to reveal the substantial presence of all kinds of foreigners among the audiences in Belgian fin-de-siècle café-concerts. Their presence might explain the ignorance of both the Belgian press and academics7 towards fin-de-siècle café-concerts and brings to the fore Belgian fin-de-siècle cities’ cosmopolitan attractiveness with an international dimension that is generally overlooked in Belgium and abroad, even to the present day. Belgian fin-de-siècle café-concerts played a major role in developing this attraction, indicated by the interconnection between Belgian migration data, café-concert networks, politics, urban planning and attractive initiatives such as international exhibitions, which was reflected in the international composition of its audience. To date, the presence of foreigners in the audience composition of similar entertainment venues was mainly pointed out in studies by scholars such as Robert W. Snyder (1989), Robert C. Allen (1991), Richard Butsch (2000), Brooks McNamara (2002) and Robert M. Lewis (2003), regarding the American counterparts of the Belgian café-concerts or ‘music-halls’, the ‘concert saloons’ or ‘vaudeville theatres’. These American studies paid special attention to German, Irish and Jewish immigrants, whereas academic studies regarding the British music halls (Bailey 1986 & 1994, Kift 1991, Maloney 2003) and French café-concerts (Condemi 1992), primarily approached the composition of the audience from the perspective of social class. However, inspired by Michel Foucault’s deconstruction of basic categories including ‘homosexual’, ‘woman’, ‘race’, and ‘the worker’ (1978), stringent audience distinctions based on race, gender and social class have been steadily criticized (Butsch 2003, 17). French art historian T. J. Clark already indicated, in his acclaimed publication Painting of Modern Life (1984), the emergence of so-called nouvelles couches sociales in the Parisian café-concerts, revealing a social alliance between lower and upper classes as the bourgeois capitalist consumption industry generated a new class of waitresses, clerks, shop assistants, artists et cetera, whose social mobility resulted in a rather transgressive identity.8 The transgressive features of the café-concerts, with their seductive decorations, space for carnivalesque amusement and discretion appeared to be the perfect habitat for these transgressive identities. Subsequently, this article indicates how Belgian fin-de-siècle café- concerts and their transgressive audiences set the stage for a permissive hedonistic atmosphere, stimulated by the presence of an international clientele. Page 386 Volume 16, Issue 2 November 2019 Recently, the Scottish scholar Paul Maloney recognized similar cosmopolitan features in Glasgow’s most iconic cultural venue in The Britannia Panopticon Music Hall and Cosmopolitan Entertainment Culture (2016), which indicates a growing recognition of the intercultural features in the studies of music hall, and which is the result of an impressive rise of research in historical tourism, travel studies, migration studies and urban history. The results of research within these disciplines into the development of the Belgian fin-de-siècle are invaluable for this article as they contextualize and embed the limited number of sources indicating foreign presence in Belgian café-concerts. The limitation of these sources demands a more creative exploration of data regarding audience composition. This data can be found, for example, in newspapers, contemporary literature and rare playbills, posters and postcards of the Belgian café-concert, safeguarded in private or rare collections such as the Vliegende Bladen or Feuilles Volantes. Combined with sources such as contemporary tourist information or guides to world exhibitions, only indirectly related to the café- concerts, a network of heterogeneous data concerning café-concert audiences can be gathered, enabling the transgressive nature of the composition of their audiences to be detected.9 In response to Richard Butsch’s 2003 ‘Historical Research Agenda’, this heterogeneous, interdisciplinary and qualitative approach makes it possible to represent audiences in a contextual and natural setting, rather than theoretically or ‘laboratory- constructed’ audiences. The approach in this article resembles the multi-method perspective on qualitative audience approaches of several Flemish research projects, such as ‘The Enlightened City’ (2005-2008) on historical media
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